Join the conversation on Buffalo Hardware, the housing boom's spread, and new water rules

Compiled by Leila Merrill

February 12, 2014Updated: February 12, 2014 11:10pm

Photo: JERRY LARA, Staff

Cattle feed near a stock tank on land near Floresville owned by Jason Peeler of Texana Feeders.

Cattle feed near a stock tank on land near Floresville owned by...

Here are some of the top comments in recent days from HoustonChronicle.com readers. Tell us and fellow readers what you think about a longtime local retailer's closing, the housing boom's spread to the south, and how a water rule affects ranchers.

Workers at Buffalo Hardware are busy getting ready for a sale that no store wants.

After nearly 70 years, the Upper Kirby-area hardware store will soon shutter, joining the legions of mom-and-pops that found it too tough to make it in the age of Home Depot.

From Sheryl Mexic:

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This has been happening for years to small businesses. Overall, it's the way consumers want it by their wallet behavior. Nothing knew at all. Ordering from the competition on their property is disgusting. Show some dame respect people.

Houston's housing boom is spreading south as builders and master-planned community developers launch projects with a reasonable commute to downtown and the Texas Medical Center.

Dallas-based Hillwood Communities announced Monday that it will start a 1,000-acre project in the city of Manvel, just south of Pearland. The planned community could include 2,100 single-family homes when it's completed in perhaps 10 years.

From Nancy Garvin:

Anything south of Pearland will not be a "reasonable commute." Gotta love developers for putting a positive spin on just about anything. If the 288 corridor fills up, it will be just as bad as 290 or I-10W.

For more than a century, feedlot operator Jason Peeler's family has grazed cattle on South Texas grasslands.

That's meant caring for grazing lands and the cattle ponds that dot them, including maintaining a completely contained, state-permitted system to prevent run-off./p>

So when Peeler heard that the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers have worked up a rule for the Clean Water Act that could redefine cattle ponds, ditches or even flooded fields as "waterways of the United States," he balked.

From TxRancher:

This is ridiculous overstepping of our federal government by a federal agency, e.g. EPA. I can prevent my stock ponds & dry creeks from pollution better than any bureaucrat!